THE Central Government has appointed Mr R.K. Gupta, Customs Commissioner, as Director-General (Specific Safeguards).

Consequent to this appointment, Mr Gupta would now have the powers to investigate the existence of "market disruption'' or "threat of market disruption'' to the domestic industry on account of increased import of an article into India, official sources said.

Besides identifying the article liable for safeguard duty, the Director-General (Specific Safeguards) has also been charged with the duty of recommending the amount of duty which, if levied, would be adequate to remove the "market disruption'' or "threat of market disruption''. The Commerce Ministry has already indicated that the Government may impose "transitional textile safeguard duty'' to tackle the cheap imports of certain textiles and clothing products from China or even a sudden surge of these imports into India.